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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24797554">Miserable Liars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/choppyVy/pseuds/choppyVy'>choppyVy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Chapter 4 contains the sex, Episode: s02e06 Sex and Candy, F/M, Filler, Jesse Manes is His Own Warning, M/M, Malex shipper, Maria friendly, Multi-chap so you can skip the parts you might not like, Threesome - F/M/M, attempt to stay true to canon and the characters at the same time, quite the task in this context</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:21:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24797554</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/choppyVy/pseuds/choppyVy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Your first gay kiss setting you on fire. Expanding your mind as to what it actually means to feel at the biggest depths of your capacity.</p><p>Alex remembers that feeling as if that kiss was as fresh as yesterday, no force, no dread, just … being set free from the inside out. 'A tremble rushing through me, I had not known my body was capable of.' Alex remembers thinking back then that all those fairytales finally made sense. A feeling like that could shake anyone from a cursed sleep.</p><p>Alex's thoughts are rushing now, trying to find the answer, an answer to tonight.</p><p>Alex did not need this, any of tonight, to reassure his frightened, nervous, inexperienced teenage self, still inhabiting his bones, of anything.</p><p>Alex needs this to reassure his late twenties broken and bruised soul and beaten down mind of a thing utterly separate from his sexual identity.</p><p>His human self.</p><p>‘I can be loved.’</p><p>Surprisingly difficult a learning curve to allow, it is still harder to hold on to.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin &amp; Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I am doing this as a multi-chapter because I want to give people the chance to read the story and skip the sex scene if they so wish.<br/>This fic is not anti any character, just me trying to understand them all more deeply than what the show offered us in 2x06 on a surface level.<br/>The story is inspired by the fact that sexual identity is not the same as someone's sexual history. Nor are humans purely rational beings.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maria is not dumb, or blind.</p>
<p>She knows their history, knows their present. Only in parts of course, very tiny ones even, but still probably better than anyone else.</p>
<p>Isobel of course would at least try and fight her on that, even though fully aware herself that she really is only familiar with Michael’s side of it all.</p>
<p>And if you asked Michael and he was in a mood to give you an actual answer he would start talking about how Max surprised him a while ago by throwing in Michael's face that he knew about Michael and Alex already back in high school. That he knew then, knows now, how much Alex leaving had hurt Michael.</p>
<p>And if you asked Alex, he would have no clue that someone in his family had been on their side all along. He would have no clue how happy his brother Gregory had been to see Alex happy, truly happy, for the first time since their mom had left. And that the reason … had been Michael.</p>
<p>If you asked Alex, all he could think about initially would be a shed, and a hammer, and a face so full of hate and anger.</p>
<p>Maria has taken in the looks Michael and Alex have exchanged all night. Watched the way Michael had kept glancing at Alex, all through their drive back to the airstream, ‘To make sure he’s okay, is really here. With us. With you.' Wounded, but safe.</p>
<p>Something about those looks had been practiced to a depth that had scared Maria.</p>
<p>Reminded her of all the times during their school years she had come back to school on a Monday morning to find Alex looking so washed out of all life, after a weekend around no one but his father and brothers.</p>
<p>Made her wonder whether this was what she had looked like, sounded like, lost for answers but trying to be there for Alex in the way she could, a child herself. Seeing her friend, she was crushing on, suffer.</p>
<p>She remembers, the memory too sharp in places, powerlessness the overwhelming feeling every time she had seen Alex clearly hurt, physically, more often still emotionally. Liz and her in an endless competition all throughout middle school and high school to be the first one to coax a smile onto Alex's lips.</p>
<p>She had been ripped out of her thoughts by Michael, asking again, "You're really okay, Alex?"</p>
<p>"I'll be fine."</p>
<p>"That's not what I asked though," Michael had kept insisting.</p>
<p>"I'll be fine."</p>
<p>"You are so stubborn, when it comes to pain."</p>
<p>"Just, I'm used to it. To hurting."</p>
<p>Maria had watched Michael swallow hard – probably swallowing down a whole host of things he had wanted to reply. This not so simple truth dragging up too much from both men's pasts. Their present and separate presents.</p>
<p>To Alex, the drive back had dragged on. Pain cutting, building.</p>
<p>Eyes closed, head slumped back against the seat, pressing his lips into a thin line, hands digging into his own thighs, both Maria and Michael had known, before asking, without asking, 'Alex is swallowing pain.' Unsure only about the kind and the amount.</p>
<p>She had watched Michael watch Alex. Seen the laboured twitch of Michael holding himself back in his fingers on the steering-wheel. Clearly itching to reach out for Alex with more than words. Sooth pain. Not daring.</p>
<p>The two of them cultivating, growing, pain and trauma and distance between them. Instead of love. Ever since they had crossed each other's paths again. It does not feel new to either Alex or Michael. It is only Maria feeling any surprise at getting to witness it in person.</p>
<p>Pain, so much of it that you become numb to it, the animal in you reaching to protect you … from yourself, you begin to lose comprehension of it, and of a sense what life could be like in its absence. It will only return in shocking force when colours do.</p>
<p>Seeing the two men like this, right beside each other, trying to keep their distance, Alex's own words had kept ringing in Maria's ears, ‘The mess between us will never be your fault.’</p>
<p>All she had been able to think, watching on, was, ‘It must be exhausting, pushing down all the time, on love.’</p>
<p>What Maria cannot understand, is lucky enough to not have to, is that re-learning yourself is too big a task to re-learn someone you have known as long, as emotionally charged, as Alex has known Michael alongside you.</p>
<p>And … it takes time, so much time, a painful amount. To the point where you have to fight yourself to not get ahead of yourself. Taking all the progress away again.</p>
<p>Reappearing in each other’s lives, both men had hoped at first that the time that had passed had only brought on change in a positive way. It had not taken them long at all to have to admit to themselves and eventually each other that that was not the case. As much as they wished it to be.</p>
<p>Others, their love and their hate for them, were still controlling both their lives.</p>
<p>There had never been space to actually heal in.</p>
<p>Let alone space like that for the two of them, together.</p>
<p>Fact remains, a frustratingly enormous amount of things in life have to happen in steps.<br/>
Alex just needs his to one day lead him back to ‘Michael.’</p>
<p>He does not know yet that the events that follow tonight will in the long run be one of exactly those steps.</p>
<p>Climbing into Michael’s trailer with the help of Maria, only minutes ago, sex, let alone a threesome, had been the furthest thing from Alex's mind. Apart from the occasional flashes of things he and Michael have done in here, as his eyes had darted around while Michael had dug around for his first aid kit.</p>
<p>“It’s gonna sting.”</p>
<p>“I know.” Alex cannot help wonder whether they forming these words are thinking of the same pain.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The antiseptic transferring from the material guided by Michael’s hand into Alex’s skin does sting.</p><p>The other sting sits deeper, is growing … from the inside out.</p><p>Alex knows Michael can feel his heart hammering beneath the barely-there barrier, worries that the urge to reach out for Michael will never stop, even though he needs it to.</p><p>It hurts too much. Is all too familiar.</p><p>He is so sick of it. ‘Not getting to live my love for you. I …, I still … lov-’ Even the aborted thought is urgent pain.</p><p>Michael reaches for the prepared bandage and carefully places it to the wound. Hands held against Alex’s chest do more than linger, rest with Alex as Michael and Alex hold each other’s gazes.</p><p>Wound or no wound, his heart calms, and it is the freest Alex has breathed in weeks. ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t let go again. Don’t let go again! Don’t let go again!!’</p><p>Michael looks away.</p><p>Witnessing the shift in Michael’s gaze, a tension begins to build in Alex’s chest, behind his eyes.</p><p>Looking over at Maria, Michael’s hands fall away. Bring Alex crashing down harder still.</p><p>Alex feels the need to spill his pain in tears intensify, the need to scream and howl at it, himself.</p><p>At the thought of having to leave.</p><p>At the thought of being alone.</p><p>At the thought of being without Michael’s love.</p><p>Michael is holding all of him in his palms.</p><p>‘You still have all of me. Do you know?’ Alex blames himself for never having made that clear.</p><p>Never having been brave enough to stay. It had been all Michael had asked of him. To stay and show his love. To him. To the world, their worlds. It had been too much. Still is, for Alex.</p><p>Not to protect himself of course … but Michael.</p><p>To not offer up a target on a silver platter to Jesse Manes.</p><p>Showing love, Alex has been made to learn, growing up, is dangerous. Hell, illegal still in some parts of the world he has been over the years.</p><p>Love, loving, to Alex Manes is scary.</p><p>And as much as he is sure love should not scare anyone, he is goddamn afraid. And cannot seem to shake it.</p><p>He is sick of allowing his fear to dictate his choices. And although he wants to mean that, it does not mean he is there yet, able to move past ‘All that damn pain, shame, guilt.’ But god does he want to try. And maybe that is what leads to what follows that night.</p><p>Despite her constant touch on his own skin, Alex is only dimly aware of Maria’s presence, is pulled fully back into it by Michael’s next words.</p><p>“I almost lost you, both of you.” Michael feels as lost as he looks to Alex and Maria as he stands, tries to remove himself from his pain. Step, out of it.</p><p>Alex wants nothing more than to feel he has permission to follow Michael’s physical retreat, make sure Michael knows he is not abandoned. Not this time.</p><p>But Alex feels too guilty for all the times he has, ‘… turned away, pushed.’</p><p>Out of fear, out of guilt, out of love, too. Maybe more than anything.</p><p>It is a feeling he cannot shake, ‘I took too long to get enough hold of myself again.’ Losing sight of Michael, of them, while gaining on himself.</p><p>Michael has made very clear where they stand. Where he needs them to.</p><p>Alex’s head spins, parted from Michael’s touch, calming and unravelling him all at once.</p><p>The third person in the room is pressing once more back into his consciousness, the jealousy he feels for her. Not because Michael chose her, but for the chance she has to stay, all the odds in her favour. ‘Maria is in touch with her own feelings,’ intensely so, has been as long as Alex can remember knowing her. Maria DeLuca has always known what she wants and gone for it.</p><p>Considering how evenly matched he and Maria have always felt to him in their friendship, it is really not surprising to Alex that it turns out they have fallen for the same soul.</p><p>Alex can even see why Michael needs and wants this relationship. ‘They have so much less baggage between them. Being good for someone,’ as Michael had put it ‘… sounds wonderful, fantastic,’ Alex thinks, longs to believe in fairy tales again.</p><p>God does he long to be good for Michael. Despite their pasts. With the aid of them.</p><p>Maria has no scruples when it comes to Michael. To reaching out to him. Following his movement away from them with an ease Alex can only envy in the deepest shades of green.</p><p>“Hey, I’m here,” she speaks to him quietly, accompanied by touches so soft and gentle, Alex wishes someone would touch him like that again, and mean it.</p><p>Not someone though.</p><p>‘Michael!’</p><p>He wonders if his insides will ever stop calling out for his first love. His only.</p><p>Alex has never felt more lonely in all of his life than when he watches Maria initiate a kiss with Michael, sees the moment Michael begins to respond in kind. He is screaming and crying and ripping himself apart internally, as he has to watch Michael relax into Maria’s touch, rest their foreheads together and just … be. Entropy changed from the impulse to escape this whole situation to resting with tranquillity right at its centre.</p><p>‘I used to be the one who took your panic away, your pain.’ Alex digs through his rushing memories. Jealous, not of Maria, but of what she can do for Michael.</p><p>Alex has been telling himself the same thing, ever since that first time after the high school reunion, when he had sought out Michael and they had ended up taking each other apart, carefully, painfully, in the very spot Alex is sitting now. ‘Stop running. You need to fucking STOP running.’ And for that one night, he had managed to not give in to his survival instincts. To not run. To not make his love for Michael seem less.</p><p>It had felt selfish.</p><p>Isobel showing up the next morning, it had felt scary. Pain the trained response, cutting into his love, cutting short his capacity to rest in it with Michael.</p><p>Trauma is uncaring.</p><p>Trauma will take everything and twist it.</p><p>Alex digs deeper, deep enough into the pain all the way down to the words he feels are expected, asked of him, ‘no place for me here, no space.’ “Um, it’s getting late. I should, I should go.” Alex, however, does not move a single muscle to put the autosuggested action into motion, and the others do notice of course.</p><p>It is hard for Alex to even look at the two of them, all soft around the edges in this light. Inviting. And all he feels is … on edge.</p><p>Sitting here on Michael’s bed alone, looking up at Maria and Michael, the two looking right back at him, Alex is still not thinking of sex, or a threesome.</p><p>All he is thinking with a shiver, muscles drawn tight, is, ‘I'm cold.'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maria notices the shift in Alex’s body.</p><p><br/>Only Michael reads it for the restlessness it is.</p><p>Alex has always hated pretending, has always had the gut instinct to wear his heart on his sleeve.</p><p>It had made him a convenient target for his father’s rage.</p><p>It had opened the door for Jesse Manes to make his son’s childhood even more of a hell than he had anyhow intended.</p><p>It had made it all the easier for Jesse Manes to put all the guilt for Alex’s pain, even that of others, onto Alex’s own shoulders. Guilt he is still struggling to shake.</p><p>And yet, Alex, absurd as he fears it must appear to other people, still caries that same longing inside, despite Jesse Manes doing his best to beat reservation and cold calculation into him. Other things out.</p><p><br/>Caring is what saved Alex from Jesse Manes’ brainwashing.</p><p>Caring is what still does, safe Alex.</p><p>It also still puts him in danger.</p><p>But, Alex has never chosen to care because it is so damn comfortable.</p><p>Caring, Alex has always felt down to his bones, is the right choice. Even when he had grown fully aware as a kid of just how much caring opens you up to hurt.</p><p>But then again, many things much less worthwhile do.</p><p>So Alex is still doing his best to hold on … to who he knows he is. Even if he is struggling these days, harder, to show himself, to anyone.</p><p><br/>Traumatic scarring aside, what all the beatings since early childhood have done, too, is deepen Alex’s friendships with Maria and Liz, and make Alex feel Michael’s love – surprising and stunning as it has always been to Alex ever since its first manifestation, that very first kiss instead of the turndown Alex had expected – with all the more intensity. The bright wonder of it too intense, still, for Alex’s cracked soul to take, in some ways. And some days more than others.</p><p><br/>He is working on mending himself. Facing his new self.</p><p><br/>Working on accepting help with that, in whatever shape it might come.</p><p>Struggling to accept it might not be the shape of a curly-haired alien he went to school with as a kid.</p><p>Alex shifts with what could easily be read as discomfort common for his war-torn body.</p><p>The curly-haired alien knows better.</p><p>Maria does too, has seen this shift in Alex’s body, in Alex’s eyes, many times, and long before he ever lost part of his leg. A deeper, older turmoil at the unrest’s core.</p><p>She knows it is not her place to push.</p><p>So she pulls instead.</p><p>Her voice is quietly determined, “I don’t want you to go.” She sits back down, right next to Alex, so close there is no closer.</p><p>Her next thoughts remaining guarded, ‘So many times I’ve wanted to beg you to stay, stay where no one could, he couldn’t get to you. I should have made you stay if only for a single night. So many times. So many nights.’ She knows she has missed making a bigger difference. Giving more. Alex's eyes searching hers, words unspoken, she feels like Alex still manages to read some of it all in her eyes.</p><p><br/>His reply surprises him himself, “I don’t really want to leave.” He swallows the rest alongside pain coursing, ‘There’s no room for me here though.’</p><p>His eyes widen as Maria leans in in a paradoxical attempt to make room, for him, with them.</p><p>It is a warm and tender touch, the kind of touch Alex has been missing. Touch that matters. Fearful and joyful in equal parts.</p><p>‘Enjoy. Enjoy touching someone. Enjoy being touched. Lean in,’ into soft warmth. It is no longer in Alex’s nature to lean easy into anything. Anyone.</p><p>It is part of what has been scared and beaten out of him.</p><p>It has been one of the biggest things to lose and at the same time one of the hardest to recognize at all as being lost to him.</p><p>For a long time now joy has made Alex recoil as pain does. Felt equally harsh. It is impossible for him not to.</p><p>Memories rush back into Alex’s bones with the touch.</p><p>Of Maria.</p><p>Of Michael.</p><p>Lips part.</p><p>Alex, still surprised, keeps leaning, follows into Maria’s space on instinct. Reaching for comfort of a kind. Trying to lean in.</p><p>A complicated relationship with touch, all touch, is something he and Michael have always shared.</p><p>The pushing and pulling that that has created between them, the seeming inability to just settle and rest with each other. It is what Alex is maddest at Jesse Manes for.</p><p>Alex is terrified he will never regain that ability. ‘Stop running. Stop running!’ It is a desperate, tired mantra.</p><p>Alex does not have it in him to be angry with Michael for looking to find that kind of rest.</p><p>Against Maria’s lips.</p><p>In her arms.</p><p>Hell, Alex is not in the least sexually attracted to Maria, but even he finds himself attracted to that warmth given with ease unfamiliar to him. He longs to lean into that ease, maybe even feel part of it for once.</p><p>And as sudden as this, Alex has gained a much better understanding of his teenage self, that had for some time dared to hope for bisexuality, just so he could have a chance to make himself fit ... and be happy, a little at least.</p><p>Michael had looked between Maria and Alex as they had kissed, stunned, confused, trying his best to figure out what was happening, and whether he is part of it, should be or wants to be.</p><p><br/>Alex, meeting his eyes, can only imagine the full shock at Maria’s move splayed across his features. He still lookes stunned now.</p><p><br/>It is definitely, clearly not what Michael had expected Maria to do, kiss Alex to make clear he can be here with her, 'With us?' Stay, ‘For comfort?’ Know, he is loved more than he can feel.</p><p>Michael feels jealousy rise in him.</p><p>Jealous not of Alex for kissing Maria, no. Jealous of Maria for getting to kiss Alex, for being capable of such a bold attempt with an uncertain outcome. To show someone else they are loved.</p><p>To show Alex how very loved he is. Wanted.</p><p>Never has Michael wished harder to be able to go back to that day he had made himself be locked away so he would not have to face having to let Alex go, would not have to watch another person walk away from him. The person he loved most then, loves most in this world now, however much he tries to avoid that truth.</p><p>Michael only realizes here, now, how huge the prize is he has truly paid for it ever since, has made Alex pay for it.</p><p>Letting him leave to fight other people’s wars not knowing how loved he was, ‘… is. I don’t want you to leave. I’ve never once wanted you to leave!’ He worries that Alex does not know. He worries that Alex does. Alex’s voice cuts into him.</p><p><br/>“I …, I don’t want to leave,” Alex says in a firmer tone, more to himself this time, looking between Maria and Michael, gaze fearful of rejection, almost panic. Of Michael ‘Rejecting. Again. All I am.’</p><p>Maria knows. She knows this is not about her, she is not who Alex wants to stay for, not really. And she decides there and then that that is okay for her. “I just, I just want us all safe.” Maria sees the pain only more deeply dug into Alex’s features at her words.</p><p>Her gaze is determined as she fixes it on Michael, reaches for his hand and attempts to pull him closer to them.</p><p>Michael does not go that easy. “What are we doing?” He has just removed himself from Alex’s life, well, love life, and now Maria is ‘… suggesting … what?’</p><p>“It’s okay,” Maria says with to Michael only more confusing and irritating ease.</p><p>Michael wonders, does even she herself know what this <em>it</em> is? For Alex to stay? For Michael to touch and hold Alex? For Michael to make him come? For Michael to want Alex in that way, in all those ways, still … and forever? For Michael to love Alex, undeniably, unshaken, with pain, steep, with a deeper ferociousness than anyone else? Than her?</p><p><br/>Another tug, Michael comes to sit in between Alex and Maria. It feels wrong.</p><p>It feels right as soon as his hand comes to rest against Alex’s leg, runs with gentle hesitation along the limb and his body begins to fully grasp that ‘Alex is here,’ truly, not just Michael’s torturous thoughts of him.</p><p>Alex’s hand is guided by Maria onto her leg, but as soon as Alex gets the chance that hand wanders over to Michael, to gently determined slip under the hem of his shirt.</p><p>Michael breaks the kiss Maria had him pulled into twists to fully face Alex at that first touch skin to skin, and the man hesitant so far finds himself falling, disappearing deep into kiss after kiss from Michael’s lips.</p><p>Falling.</p><p>Together.</p><p>Michael keeps looking between the two people who so clearly desire him, long to ‘… be, … be with me.’ It is taking his breath away. Too used to being used and rejected, over and over. To being afraid of that.</p><p>Stripped of his shirt by hands that have known his body for over a decade, pulled into a kiss with Maria, Michael finds himself turning back around at Alex’s merest touch, look longing and loving, lips gentler with each other this time. Gentle as Alex’s lips still fall after all over his newly exposed skin as Michael turns to Maria again.</p><p>Michael and Maria lie down with each other.</p><p>Alex feels lost for a moment, scrambling onto the bed after them only to find himself out of place (how he feels every time when he watches them kiss, it makes Alex want to run again), but before he can give it too much thought, his specialty, Michael has turned to him again and pulls him fully down with them, to his other side, ducks his head and begins to place kisses along an abdomen and chest Michael is newly exposing with hands dipped under fabric, pushing it up, aside. Mindful of Alex's wound, its bandaging.</p><p>These loving touches Alex has missed. Maddeningly. Melts against the bed at them.</p><p>Michael looks up in renewed wonder as Alex gasps with the first brush of fingertips over nipples. Maria’s hands on Michael’s hip and carding through his hair are all but forgotten when Michael sees pain push after the hungry wonder in Alex’s features. Michael’s first thought, ‘Coming back to you, each other, … always a crash-landing.’ Then the other shoe drops.</p><p><br/>Michael abruptly sitting up, making room for Alex to properly lie down on his back, Maria nearly falls out of the small space they are attempting to share.</p><p>“Fuck, Alex, I’m SO sorry!”</p><p>Maria frowns, “What? What’s the matter?”</p><p>Another jolt of pain has Alex hiss before he can bring out any other response to Michael’s worried and apologetic gaze.</p><p>Michael’s fingers find the button, ask, “Is it okay, if …?”</p><p>Alex swallows hard but nods.</p><p>Maria watches Michael’s eyes focused firmly on Alex’s with such tenderness it makes her heart ache as clearly practised hands with great care strip Alex of his jeans.</p><p><br/>If Maria had her gaze on Alex’s face and not the prosthesis that is revealed she would see how his features shift uncomfortably, his whole body tensing at her open stare.</p><p>Alex is distracted only a moment later by an understanding Michael cutting of Maria’s line of sight; Michael, shirtless, leaning over an equally shirtless Alex, Michael’s body heat, hot on a good day, so intense now, Alex feels himself breaking out in a sweat, as their lips move and move, Alex’s hands finding Michael’s curls. Michael after a moment more pulling back only for Alex to notice where one of Michael’s hands has moved. “Okay if I take it off?”</p><p>“You remember how?” Alex is all too painfully aware of the single time Michael had done it in his stead. A loose-tread moan slips past his lips at the memory of Michael's careful touches, so gentle it breaks something in him all over.</p><p>“I remember how,” Michael soothes, gaze on Alex alone still.</p><p>Holding Michael’s eyes, Alex is reminded of all only ever Michael has been able to make him feel. ‘Visible. Loved. Worthy of it.’</p><p>Michael hums, “Alex?” A soft murmur dropping after, “Hey.”</p><p>Alex swallows hard, huffs heavy, “'k.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Michael wants, tries to make sure, aware of just exactly how vulnerable taking off his leg, giving away some of his ability to leave in the blink of an eye, makes Alex feel each time. Running has been a big part of both their lives. Michael knows what it can do to your head, the thought alone of the ability being taken. You can drown in such a thing; in shock, all the more painfully and slow for it.</p><p>Michael watches Alex's face do a complicated twist before his lips settle in a nervous smile. Still accompanied by a pained frown that makes Michael long to shake Alex’s pain for him.</p><p>“Yeah." Alex reaches for any part of the man he can, grip firm as it settles, grounding himself and Michael already even before Michael gets to hear the further grounding, "Okay.”</p><p><br/>Michael had begun to forget, over these last weeks, how very much he has missed Alex open to him. Being this open. Vulnerable with him, only him. Only in rare moments, but in rare moments, still.</p><p><br/>This love they both cannot shake, it can be a heavy burden to shoulder.</p><p>As Michael undoes him, in yet another way he has never been able to trust anyone else to, Alex gasps out a breath at the memory of the last time, Michael's hand still mangled, and somehow his touch no less certain, no less sure and tender all at once.</p><p>Tears prick at the corners of Alex's eyes, the frown deepens.</p><p>Michael sitting up on his hind legs at the foot of the bed, prosthesis set safely aside, with a motion so gentle Alex is fighting down tears hardest yet, Michael’s hands are both on his stump sock with the utmost tenderness stripping Alex off it.</p><p>Alex is startled by a hand in his hair, remembers then, ‘Maria.’</p><p>But Michael has always known how to read his body language so well and instantly sooths the ache by lying down by Alex’s side, Maria's touch cut off as sudden as it came.</p><p>Alex feels a little sick at feeling grateful to Michael for that. 'This is so weird,' he thinks, unable to relax as he stares at the ceiling, ‘Who am I trying to kid here? This was always gonna be, gonna stay weird.’ Then Michael is leaning in once more, places a kiss to Alex’s cheek. When Alex looks over and sees the undeniable love for him in Michael's eyes he does no longer want to hold on to the weirdness of this. He takes a deep steadying breath, loosens all control, but his body betrays him, the first thing it does with this permission, the freedom, being … fear spilling over in tears.</p><p><br/>His thoughts rushing to join in, ‘There will be a tomorrow,’ Alex swallows, eyes pressing shut, only pushing tears outwards faster. 'And I will have to leave. Again.’ He heaves a heavy breath, unsettled, which his body presses into a sob. ‘At least I did not run tonight.' It is some comfort, there is some pride in it to feel.</p><p><br/>Never before has Alex allowed himself to long this hard to stay. Anywhere. And act on it.</p><p><br/>'Too late.' He is reminded as he glimpses over and sees Maria at Michael's side, trailing kisses along Michael's neck and shoulders, as Michael remains turned to him, Michael's forehead pressed to Alex's temple, hand gently playing with Alex's hair, other resting soft against the bare skin of Alex's stomach, all of Michael pressed to Alex's side, but clearly embracing Maria’s touches, even as his focus remains on Alex. On attempting to sooth the pain Michael thinks he can reach.</p><p><br/>Even in this Michael looks ‘Comforted,’ at Maria's touch on his skin, in a way Alex worries he has never been able to give Michael. 'Everything so broken between us.’ A swallowed down sob, ‘Still.' Another, 'Forever.'</p><p><br/>Sometimes Alex feels nothing more than part of Michael’s pain. The thing that demands attention, not deserves it.</p><p><br/>This is one of those times.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, finally the chapter that requires the warning, yes there is a threesome happening here, I mean, reading it you will clearly be able to see where to stop if you are not into reading the actual smut.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a long while of them just lying there, the only one moving limbs, along mostly Michael’s body, is Maria.</p><p><br/>
Eventually, Alex tilts his head, to the side and down, to touch Michael’s nose with his.</p><p><br/>
Michael’s eyes flutter open.</p><p>Alex is not quite smiling, eyes pleading, before Alex presses them shut again. Hoping …, hoping to be met with a different and yet not so different view upon reopening them.</p><p>Michael studies Alex's features best as he can with how little they offer. Closed off in too many ways. All Michael sees, can read in them with certainty, is longing.</p><p>It is met with an almost hidden whisper, as Michael leans up a little on his elbow, kisses at the salt of the dried tears on Alex’s skin.</p><p>It is a whisper Alex thinks he must have hallucinated. He will have his brain insist in the morning, and every morning after for a long time, on the memory that it was nothing more than his own wishful thinking, a fantastic fantasy. Yearning.</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>Alex's eyes shoot open, he finds Michael's lips slightly parted but perfectly still, no trace of movement. No trace of sound. The answering echo to it is held in Alex's gaze, and that is where it remains. Random feeling fear, really not random at all, takes over before any thought can take root.</p><p>Too much to push past.</p><p>Too much needed still to dare.</p><p>Especially right here.</p><p>Especially right now.</p><p>Alex knows there is no future for them as long as this is what overrides all else he feels all too easy. 'Every time.'</p><p>This time, however, with that thought new determination grows in him.</p><p>To make the most of the time he gets to have with Michael.</p><p>To make the most of this night, these hours, right now. Michael here and wanting and allowing the two of them …, Alex cannot stand the idea of being the thing in the way of memories he yearns for.</p><p>And if he is in, for his own peace of mind, Alex needs to be all in.</p><p>His eyes meet Maria’s. Alex leans in, kisses Michael, deep but brief, leans over Michael, past him, reaches for Maria, pulls her into a kiss, throws himself into it, all tongue and some teeth.</p><p>Then Michael's lips are on his again, an unfamiliar hand against his skin, the three of them on their sides, pressed as close as they can be.</p><p>Michael feels himself running hotter and hotter, feels engulfed by two people who care '… about me,' mean for him to feel good and safe and wanted. Michael wonders if this is happiness, the feeling taking him, if this is the love he keeps reaching for but never quite can allow himself to grasp, to hold on to.</p><p>Never in his wildest most desperate dreams has he dared imagine that love reaching for him.</p><p>It is dizzying, two people holding on to him tonight, grasping for him, his gaze, his mind, his full attention.</p><p>His body responds happily to every single touch, Alex’s tentative ones growing bold at times, Maria’s feeling more possessive from the get-go, like she is subconsciously attempting to lay a claim to him, desperate, like she is not fully sure she has any.</p><p>Even with the electric tension she senses between Alex and Michael, there is an ease between her and him too that has Maria grasping harder for more of Michael. Hope on her side.</p><p>There is no telling who will lose, only dread everyone is pushing past stubbornly. Determined. Both Alex and Maria knowing there is something worth fighting for here, Michael only dizzied by it. Drifting in all the things he has not quite allowed himself to feel in a decade's time.</p><p>He lets go.</p><p>A lightbulb shatters and an amused somehow sad snort escapes Alex, while Maria jumps at the sound.</p><p>‘Only you have ever made me lose control like this,’ Michael thinks meeting Alex’s increasingly hooded eyes, Alex's smile for once easy, adoring, smitten. Michael leans in, the kiss to Alex’s lips is equally playful and soft as Alex’s gaze is as they part.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Michael says, turning his head to look at Maria, place a kiss to her lips that emboldens her hands again.</p><p>All blends into a soft blur then in Michael's mind.</p><p>When Michael comes for the first time that night it is by Maria’s hand stroking him to completion as Michael is sucking and licking and biting on Alex’s left nipple, relishing the sounds Alex makes, coming apart as he looks up and sees Alex’s wide blown eyes staring down to meet his, Alex’s lips softly parted, hands still firmly burrowed in Michael’s hair.</p><p>After that there is no holding back Michael, as the orgasm washes him through still, he already scoots down the bed again tonight, pushing underwear aside, pulling it off, sucking Alex into his mouth, Alex’s eyes follow, then fall shut, head falling back, lips opening to release a deep moan.</p><p>Maria watches with a gulp as Alex moans again, Michael working him fast, bobbing his head. And she is touching herself, imagining what it would feel like to have her be the one eaten out by Michael with such enthusiasm.</p><p>Michael's tongue working Alex in familiar patterns, Michael's teeth teasing pushing him further towards the edge, soft curls on his fingertips, the bobbing motion of Michael's head against his palms, Alex with a shallow thrust comes into Michael’s mouth, neither even attempting to negotiate the act, clearly having been on the same page about how this is going to go for a long time.</p><p>After, Maria can stop wondering for it takes Michael no more than a quick scurry up Alex’s body and a hungering deep kiss to then turn around, Alex moulding himself to Michael’s back instinctively, holding on to him, as Michael’s hand finds Maria’s on her clit and presses down.</p><p>Maria moans and lets her hand fall away her legs fall open and Alex watches over Michael’s shoulder with curiosity as Michael’s hand replaces Maria’s, and in clearly as skilled a manner as he had just given head to Alex, leans fully into stimulating Maria into deeper wetness, deeper ecstasy, one nipple sucked in between his lips, breaking a moan from Maria’s throat.</p><p>Alex keeps watching as she lies there in nothing but her bra and shirt anymore, wide open, eyes flitting between Michael’s and Alex’s as she gasps out breaths. One hand fisted in Michael’s curls, one in the sheets below her, her body begins to tremble, Alex enthralled by the display.</p><p>She stills and comes fully apart at the wet sounds of Michael’s hand, who stills it but remains resting right where it had been, fingers pressed against Maria’s clearly still throbbing clit as she grinds in little aborted rolls of pleasure against the deliciously rough texture of Michael’s fingertips, like Michael clearly knows she likes. Clearly already on her way to her second orgasm.</p><p>Michael grinning leans down to kiss her.</p><p>Alex, equally inquisitive as jealous moves with Michael, his curious hand reaches down and settles over Michael’s, presses down on it. And Maria, she grinds down harder into the added pressure, gasps out against Michael’s lips.</p><p>Alex’s joining gasp rings in Michael’s ear and Michael is fully hard again as the two of them watch Maria grind for a minute more and come apart even harder this second orgasm around.</p><p>“Fuck,” Alex says in surprised wonder. He might not be attracted to women, not even Maria, but this unbridled display of pleasure, this leaning into it is goddamn sexy.</p><p>“Michael, Alex,” Maria moans and finds herself a moment later fully naked in between the equally naked bodies of the two men with her.</p><p>She shudders and moans just at the feel of so much skin on skin contact.</p><p>“What do you want?” Michael asks the other two looking at him, Michael moving in between their gazes, thinking, ‘I want to be good for someone.’</p><p>Maybe that is why Michael and Maria work, Maria has never had a problem asking for what she wants. “I want your tongue, Michael. Alex, your hand.”</p><p>It is an anatomy lesson to Alex tonight. And he feels sure it is Michael’s tongue driving into her that ends up making Maria come again, not his fingers clumsily slipping around between wet folds.</p><p>Maria is all strung out after three more orgasms washing through her in quick succession. Everything surprisingly, effortlessly wet, slippery to Alex.</p><p>It appears to him that it takes some time longer to get there in the first place with a human of the female species but once she is there it is a rush of further orgasms quickly achieved to follow, chasing the first. ‘If you know what you’re doing,’ Alex thinks. ‘Michael clearly does.’</p><p>Bone-deep mind-melting relaxation fully achieved with multiple orgasms. Then again, maybe that is just how it works for Maria. ‘Not like I would know, or ever will.’ Alex if anything feels gayer now than ever, which he is sure would sound strange too most people not a person identifying as sitting in the deep end of the gay of the spectrum of human sexuality. They lack the experience of how wrong the wrong of a straight encounter of any kind actually feels to a deeply gay human, how distinctly the wrong echoes, undeniably so, in every fibre of your body.Just as the right always will. </p><p>Your first gay kiss setting you on fire. Expanding your mind as to what it actually means to feel at the biggest depths of your capacity.</p><p>Alex remembers that feeling as if that kiss was as fresh as yesterday, no force, no dread, just … being set free from the inside out. 'A tremble rushing through me, I had not known my body was capable of.' Alex remembers thinking back then that all those fairytales finally made sense. A feeling like that could shake anyone from a cursed sleep.</p><p>Alex's thoughts are rushing now, trying to find the answer, an answer to tonight.</p><p>Alex did not need this, any of tonight, to reassure his frightened, nervous, inexperienced teenage self, still inhabiting his bones, of anything.</p><p>Alex needs this to reassure his late twenties broken and bruised soul and beaten down mind of a thing utterly separate from his sexual identity.</p><p>His human self.</p><p>‘I can be loved.’</p><p>What he does know, too, after tonight, is how happy Michael looks every time Maria comes on his tongue, on his fingers, in between his lips. Like he knows and is getting high on the rush that he did good, better than. Alex cannot help the thought rushing to his mind, ‘Can I ever …, have I ever made you feel this way?’</p><p>Michael turns with a grin from a clearly spent Maria back unto Alex, manoeuvres the two of them back into each other’s arms, as Maria, blissed out, watches on, one hand uncoordinatedly grasping for the men with her as Michael lavishes his attention as completely all-encompassing onto Alex, as he just had onto Maria, who moans as she sees them tangle together.</p><p>Michael settles fully on top of Alex, entirely with each other, disappearing in kisses, deep and possessing. Hands buried in each other’s hair, grinding together.</p><p>“So hot,” Maria whispers, can hear Michael chuckle in response, a brief glance over towards her, away from Alex, has Alex feeling small and insignificant in far too big a part again with a frightening instantaneousness.</p><p>No, Alex does not want to share any part of this man pressed against him. Not with anyone, woman or man.</p><p>But this realization is not new, and it does not scare Alex.</p><p>Alex is terrified by how whole he feels as soon as Michael fully focusses his attention back onto him, asking again, asking anew, him, only him, “Alex, what do you want?”</p><p>Alex does not dare ask for what he really wants, cannot bare even so much as the thought of sharing that, exposing himself like that with Maria there, her presence all of a sudden so much more distracting to him than he had felt it all night. ‘I want you inside of me.’ “I want us -.” Alex breaks of himself.</p><p>A whisper, “Yeah?” Michael tries his best to encourage Alex tenderly to speak his desire.</p><p>‘I want us to kick out Maria and for you to be inside of me, come inside of me.’</p><p>“Alex?”</p><p>He hears the concern now fully returned to Michael’s voice, lips gently tracing his skin, his features.</p><p>“I want us, you and me,” Alex hastens to add, eyes widening, and it feels so weird having to emphasise that, repeating, “you and me, to come, together. I want to feel your hand on me, on us, holding, stroking.” Alex swallows, “I want to see you come, the way you gasp and your features twist.” 'I want to burn into my memories what you look like, like that, in bliss. In me. Part of me.'</p><p>Michael’s hand finds their cocks, is moving along them with practised ease, thumb flicking over slits from time to him, grasp tightening and speed increasing further and further with the pressure around their cocks, in their balls.</p><p>“Keep talking,” Michael moans. ‘I need to know it is you. You, here with me.’</p><p>Alex gasps over and over at the sensations, so well-known to him, so well missed. “I want you to come and then come again spurt after spurt of you, on me.” Alex needs to feel he belongs tonight, ‘I want you to, I want, I need ….' His heart is hammering at him, “Claim me!”</p><p>The guttural moan that rips from Michael’s throat at Alex's words makes him double down on his actions, and he finds the skin on Alex’s neck as Alex keeps moaning, moans louder when he feels Michael’s relentless mouth working away on his neck alongside his hand on their cocks. Choked of sounds tumble free.</p><p>Michael’s free hand grabs for Alex's ass. Michael whispers, “For me.”</p><p>Alex comes with a shout.</p><p>As Michael’s fingers slip in between Alex’s ass cheeks and he massages the tight ring of muscle there, Alex keeps spurting all over them. With a firm push of fingertips that has Alex grind himself harder up against Michael with ferocious determination, Michael follows Alex with a wrecking shudder over the edge.</p><p>“Fuck,” Michael gasps with every spurt of his cum onto Alex’s skin, “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!”</p><p>They cling to each other, shaking only eclipsed by the elated smiles continued moaning and laughter erupting between the two of them anew over and over.</p><p>Michael kisses Alex, turns his head and kisses Maria, who looks up at him sleepily, before he falls back into the sheets in between the others.</p><p>Alex tightly held against him in his arms, Maria presses herself up against Michael's back. Feeling like the afterthought. Feeling the first deeper traces of dread beginning to accumulate deep in her gut.</p><p>Alex curls up tighter against Michael's chest, burrows deeper into his arms, takes fiercer hold, of himself. His eyes let go of Michael’s, lids falling shut with exhaustion. Alex’s mind holds on to two thoughts fighting for his attention, ‘I did not run. I don’t want to ever let go again.’ Alex's father of course is not done testing that resolve, yet.</p><p><br/>
Surrounded like this, Michael thinks he might never in his life have felt ‘ … this loved.’</p><p><br/>
Alex falls asleep first, his even breathing against his chest luring Michael after him, as they shift in their sleep into a long familiar position, Maria lying by their side.</p><p><br/>
Her hand caressing Michael’s hair and temple, eyes focused on Alex, his head resting heavily on Michael’s chest, arms slung around Michael's middle, holding determined onto him, even in his sleep, Maria swallows, eyes drifting up to the ceiling as she twirls one of Michael's curls around her finger. Wondering.</p><p>Wondering what exactly she has done here, what exactly she meant to do. Whichever way, she realizes now, it might just have cost her everything.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In case you are getting that vibe, yes I am a lesbian. I have been informed you can tell from this chapter. What can I say, I am not even into Maria at all, but totally into women's pleasure.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So this is it, the final chapter.<br/>With a hope-filled ending.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Waking up, Alex feels an instant sense of dread. He is still naked, they all are, the heat emanating from Michael’s body keeping them warm.</p><p><br/>
Hands reaching up to cover his face, quietly sighing into them, Alex knows it will be a thing of impossibility to climb off this bed without waking the other two.</p><p>He is nowhere near in the mood to feel this exposed. Relief washes through him when sitting up his hands find familiar fabric. His boxers and shirt have somehow not made it far from where he had ended up at the end of last night before they had all fallen asleep.</p><p>Miraculously, Alex only wakes Michael when he tries to make it off the bed.</p><p>That is as far as Alex knows, unaware of Maria only pretending to still be asleep when hushed voices seep into her consciousness and what happened last night comes back to her.</p><p>“Need to make a call to Sheriff Valenti.”</p><p>“Coffee?”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Michael does not like how worried Alex looks but he lets him be, lets him slip back into his prosthetic, dress fully, while Michael goes about making the promised coffee and watches Alex step outside to make that follow-up phone call.</p><p>Maria is still on the bed, asleep to Michael, not asleep at all, mind racing.</p><p>Michael places a blanket around her, pushes curls aside, places a kiss to her forehead. If he notices how she tenses he does not say anything.</p><p><br/>
Alex's mind is only half on the matter at hand during the phone call. There is no liking what he gets to hear, but also not much he can do about it right now.</p><p>When Michael appears from the trailer coffee cups in hand Alex feels dread, not about what they have done, although it will most definitely be weird facing Maria again the first couple times at least.</p><p>Dread, dread at how he allowed himself to do his best to buy into a fantasy.</p><p>‘You are no longer mine.’ The thought is chased by a much more hurtful one, ‘I wanted you to be, for so long, but I don’t think that we ever fully were … each other’s. Incapable of fully being each other’s?'</p><p>No questioning, no reasoning will ever stop the longing Alex carries in his bones.</p><p>'All I ever wanted was to let you in. Yet, I never quite understood how, could work out how this, us, could work.’</p><p>Alex says none of it.</p><p>“Tell me Valenti got the bastard.”</p><p>“When the cops showed up at the farm, the trailers were on fire. Travis and Trevor were in the wind. At least now Valenti has some suspects.”</p><p>Michael looks unhappy at the news.</p><p>Alex has already moved on, “Maria's still asleep?”</p><p>Michael nods, pensive.</p><p>They struggle to fully meet each other’s eyes as the topic has shifted to a much soarer spot than, strangely, an encounter with a pair of weird and dangerous twins.</p><p>Michael swallows as he hears Alex do what he has seen him do before, many times, resort to sarcasm, try and turn the discomfort, the pain, into a joke, a light-hearted quip. They have not really talked since they were teenagers. “I really never thought I would check that off my bucket list.”</p><p>It does not fully work, not with Michael. Incapable of losing sight of each other even standing at the centre of distortion.</p><p>Michael knows Alex, sees Alex, his struggle with what happened last night, how that smile, forced to Alex’s face is meant as a distraction. Michael does not take the bait, own expression remaining serious, “You think we crossed a line?” To Michael none of this is a laughing matter, to him, neither Alex nor Maria are a joke. He has love for them both and he cannot bare to have Alex walk around not knowing, doubting. 'But I am the one who let go.'</p><p>Michael realizes then that he has to go with what Alex is putting forward today, he has no right reopening wounds he in part inflicted, has no intention to stay around and bandage.</p><p>He cannot go back on that and throw himself back into that vicious cycle he and Alex inevitably fall into, do not seem to be able to grow out of together.</p><p>So the next time Alex attempts sarcasm, Michael reluctantly finds himself giving in, laughing at … he knows not what, feeling like crying, giving the pressure between them a valve for release in the laughter instead.</p><p><br/>
“If you’d told me I’d have a threesome with my best friend and my first love, I’d say, ‘Which circle of hell am I in?’”</p><p><br/>
“That’s hell?” His unsteady laugh to Michael’s surprise seems to unlodge something in Alex, making him want to open up to Michael, unsure how.</p><p><br/>
“I don’t know, I felt, um, ….” Alex keeps grasping for words. None come to him feeling exactly right. And he is sick of settling.</p><p><br/>
It breaks Michael how lost Alex looks in this moment, reminding him that this precisely is what they have always struggled with, finding a way to communicate themselves to each other. So Michael tries to help out.</p><p>“I felt ….”</p><p>“... loved.”</p><p>The surprise and curious gaze Michael is met with, as if Alex is trying to recall something at the word choice, cuts Michael deep, reminds him of what had brought the two of them together in the first place.</p><p><br/>
'Longing.' Longing for love.</p><p><br/>
It leaves Michel stranded with the realization that more than a decade later they are both still trying to learn to recognize the feeling, still too foreign, the way it might always remain. They both fighting to allow it. ‘When you said you wanted to stay, last night, … .’</p><p><br/>
It is hard to give a name to what you have so little profound experience with, overwritten with so much constantly fresh, everlastingly fresh trauma.</p><p><br/>
Pain reinforced hardens.</p><p>You learn to wear it as armour.</p><p>It is always, will always be easier to hate oneself, … and others. Bizarrely less scary.</p><p>Thick barriers expected to stay in place, love asking you to tear them down, tear yourself open in front of someone else's eyes. Alex cannot see himself ever growing strong like that.</p><p>Last night having been a taste of what it would take.</p><p>'Christ! How did I do that? I can't even allow myself to kiss him in public. How did I do all THAT, right in front of Maria?'</p><p>His doubt does not quell the longing.</p><p>The thing about walls, they do not just keep at distance what you want to remain there.</p><p>Being with Maria, for Michael, means breaking some walls down, being ‘... being with you, Alex, is climbing the wall and plunging myself with you into the abyss. Wondering if you are still at my side with every second I fall, or whether you have turned away. Am I already falling alone and just haven't noticed yet? It is wondering every time who of us, this time around, is going to turn back.’</p><p><br/>
“Um. Yeah. Nothing like getting stabbed in the middle of nowhere to really bring people together, right?”</p><p>And ‘We're back to the jokes,’ Michael thinks but laughs along anyway with an ache in his heart, punched deeper when he looks back up at Alex and sees all the sadness become too much, seep, growing in visibility.</p><p><br/>
Deeply saddened sighs form the build up to Alex's declaration of lasting love that avoids the word so hard for him to take or give, “You know, I used to really think that you and I were gonna end up together.”</p><p>“I used to, too.”</p><p>What hurts Alex more than Michael’s words is his gaze, departed. With another sad smile Alex puts down the cup, his hand reaching for Michael’s, his body drifting towards the other man, reaching again, before he makes it retreat, with a last lingering look makes himself turn, shrinking into himself further as he makes himself keep walking. Away. For all he knows, for good.</p><p>Away.</p><p><br/>
From the man he knows he loves.</p><p>Form the man he will always love.</p><p>When Michael re-enters the trailer and sits down with Maria he is met with a look, sad, unsure, and challenging at once. It is born out of that endless determination and drive of Maria’s that is such a big part of what has Michael falling for her. She is her own woman, knows her own mind.</p><p>Even now, in this still tensed atmosphere they quickly fall back into unforced soothing banter with each other, and Michael knows without a doubt he is where he needs to be. With whom he needs to be.</p><p>Maria would like to believe that mostly she wanted to give Alex the chance to say goodbye. For once. This time. She had seen it in Alex's eyes, that day they had first talked about Michael, really talked. Alex had not gotten a goodbye this time either.</p><p>Deep down though she fears much more selfish reasons. And if anything, all she had suspected has been confirmed.</p><p>‘You will never stop loving each other. You don’t know how.’</p><p>And so, part of her, the strong warrior woman in her, who is not afraid to be alone, she had hoped for Michael to follow Alex, to not return, spare her the future heartache, the choices to come, to make.</p><p>She does not need any psychic powers to know, today already. Michael will walk away from her, if not today, one day. Unless she does it first herself. For whom? For her? For them?</p><p>Impossible to tell. Yet. Impossible to walk away, today. Maria is in too deep.</p><p><br/>
If falling for Michael Guerin is the easiest thing in the world, falling out of love with him could not be harder.</p><p>Weeks later, when Michael calls and Alex comes to him without hesitation, a hope he is not ready to allow to take root sparks in Michael. They might be apart, but they are both growing, together. Learning to be with each other. Be there. Show up for each other.</p><p>It is all new.</p><p>It is the start.</p>
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